That $450 Million Leonardo? It’s No Mona Lisa.

You can’t put a price on beauty; you can put a price on a name. When the National Gallery in London exhibited a painting of Christ in 2011 as a heretofore lost work by Leonardo da Vinci, the surprise in art historical circles was exceeded only by the salivating of dealers and auctioneers.

The painting, “Salvator Mundi,” is the only Leonardo in private hands, and was brought to market by the family trust of Dmitry E. Rybolovlev, the Russian billionaire entangled in an epic multinational lawsuit with his former dealer, Yves Bouvier. On Wednesday night, at Christie’s postwar and contemporary sale (in which it was incongruously included to reach bidders beyond Renaissance connoisseurs), the Leonardo sold for a shocking $450.3 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction. Worth it? Well, what are you buying: the painting or the brand?

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A detail of the Leonardo da Vinci painting.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

The painting, when purchased at an estate sale in 2005 for less than $10,000, was initially considered a copy of a lost Leonardo, completed around 1500 and once in the collection of Charles I of England. Over time, its wood surface became cracked and chafed, and it had been crudely overpainted, as an image in the sale catalog shows. Cleaned by the conservator Dianne Dwyer Modestini, the painting now appears in some limbo state between its original form and an exacting, though partially imagined, rehabilitation.

Authentication is a serious but subjective business. I’m not the man to affirm or reject its attribution; it is accepted as a Leonardo by many serious scholars, though not all. I can say, however, what I felt I was looking at when I took my place among the crowds who’d queued an hour or more to behold and endlessly photograph “Salvator Mundi”: a proficient but not especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations.

Its most engaging passages are in the embroidered blue gown that Christ wears. The robe’s folds are supple and sinuous, and the trim, zigzagged with an elaborate and unbroken knotting pattern, has a mathematical intricacy that gives this Christian painting a surprising Islamic touch. (Technical analysis confirms that Leonardo used pure lapis lazuli for the robe, rather than cheaper azurite.)

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A detail of “Salvator Mundi” showing Christ holding an orb in his left hand. “It’s not as optically showy as Dan Brown devotees might like,” our critic writes, “but its watery coloring, glossy edges and dimpled bottom do the trick well enough.”CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

The orb that Christ holds in his left hand, symbolizing his dominion over all creation, is not as showy as Dan Brown devotees might like, but its watery coloring, glossy edges and dimpled bottom do the trick well enough. His curly hair, especially the lower tresses framing Christ’s neckline, has a certain corkscrew adeptness, though it’s not as proficient as the similarly kinky locks of Leonardo’s recently restored “St. John the Baptist,” at the Louvre in Paris, or Botticelli’s slightly earlier “Portrait of a Lady,” at the Städel in Frankfurt.

Yet there’s a meekness and monotony to “Salvator Mundi” that can’t be redeemed by these marginally engaging details. The savior of the world appears in this painting as a soft, spumy cipher. His eyes are blank. His chin, flecked with stubble, recedes into shadow. The raised right hand is stiffer and less sensate than John the Baptist’s, and overlit relative to his shaded cheeks and mouth.

And unlike other Leonardo portraits — “St. John the Baptist” and the Mona Lisa, or the alluring “Lady With an Ermine,” or “La Belle Ferronnière,” recently shipped from the Louvre to Abu Dhabi — here the subject appears head-on, flattened into the picture frame like a medieval icon painting. Other sophisticated paintings from around 1500, such as Albrecht Dürer’s Christifying self-portrait in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek, made use of such frontal orientation. But where Dürer’s self-portrait as Christ radiates authority, “Salvator Mundi” retires into itself. This Jesus, far from saving the world, might struggle to save himself a seat on a crosstown bus.

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Christ’s curls and the neckline of his gown are shown in this detail of the painting.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

Of course, the painting’s place within the history of northern Italian art was not at hand in the sale room on Wednesday, nor did it trouble the thousands of visitors who saw it in New York, London or Hong Kong. Displayed in a darkened gallery under spotlights, framed by a pair of security guards wearing funereal black, the Leonardo was presented almost as a holy relic — and Christie’s marketing department rolled out the superlatives alongside, sending the painting on a world tour and hyping it with the rather sacrilegious nickname of “the male Mona Lisa.”

The fantasy of individual genius was on offer, a fantasy more seductive and enduring than any in Western art. It can infuse even the driest of pictures with the illusion of greatness, and price tags this bloated, too, can imbue workaday art with new weight. But reputations rise and fall, attributions are assigned and reconsidered, and money — well, money can’t buy you everything. When its new owner gazes at “Salvator Mundi” over the mantelpiece (or, more likely, visits it in a climate-controlled, tax-free storage facility) he or she may have cause to reflect on the Gospel of Luke.

“Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled,” intones the man in the $450 million picture. “But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: A Blockbuster Painting Is No ‘Mona Lisa’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe